10th Jan.

Amused to find muddy raccoon paw prints on a t-shirt I'd hung out over my bike - my stuff had been investigated!  Set off, bike running well.  So many people are keen to ask me where I'm heading, where I'm from, where I started... at the side of the road, at cafes, at junctions, at campgrounds.  People who cycle, people who don't.  I love talking to these random people.  Long distance cycling seems to have the right mix of vulnerability and self-reliance that people warm to. 
About 50 miles today, although it shouldn't have been quite so many - got muddled, off route, wrong direction, finally arrived at state beach campgrounds at sunset.  Smoked goats cheese rolled up with lettuce for snacking today - treated myself!
Cycling past fields and fields of artichokes today.  Passed vast bare soil fields too, ploughed, crumbly and cracked.  Passed vast sterile-looking agro-plastic clad irrigated fields.  One with dozens of workers, all with different tasks, some with liquid backpacks on, squirting each tiny plant.  Music on, could hear it drifting across the field.  Passed a brussel sprout combine harvester, manned by at least a dozen guys, some inside the slow-moving contraption, some on the ground, pulling and throwing the stalks in.  Huge trailers piled high with sprouts, sprouts flying through the air out of the chute, the air was thick with raw cabbage flesh!  They gave me a wave as I stopped to take a photo.  They were grafting, looking like hard work. 

I've seen big intensive fields before, seen swaths of agro-plastic, read about large scale growing, and eaten the produce, so it wasn't a surprise, but I don't like it.  Soil that hasn't been treated and chopped up again and again, is teaming with life and nutrients, and is the basis of growing anything.  But this process is so destructive, input-reliant, the soil is no longer a rich resource, and the produce reflects that.  The only way I can see to move away from this is to put more time into providing for ourselves on a small-scale, and less time into doing jobs to earn money, to then pay for what we need to sustain ourselves, at the cost of being completely detached from the methods and implications of the style of agriculture or land management we are supporting with our money.  This isn't a new thought, and isn't US-specific, but seeing such vast expanses of soil with not a weed in sight brings it to mind afresh.